“I played a little too much, and that (expletive) really hurt me,” Durant said. “To know that I affected Billy Donovan and the Thunder – like I love those people and I don’t never (want to hurt them).

“That was just me being a total (expletive) idiot. I own up to it. I want to move on from it. It probably hit me probably harder than what everybody (thought). Everybody else was telling me to relax, to snap out of it, but I was really, really upset with myself more than anything. It’s not the fact that people were talking about me, because I deserve that, but I’m just more upset with myself that I let myself go that far, you know what I was saying? It was a joke to me at first. I was doing it all summer, and it went too deep. I went too hard… I haven’t slept in two days, two nights. I haven’t ate. It’s crazy, because I feel so (expletive) pissed at myself and I’m mad that I brought someone into it.”

Durant wasted no time in sending an apology to Donovan, the coach who left his college post at Florida to coach the Thunder in the summer of 2015. But he knows the damage has been done, that his decision to explain his departure from Oklahoma City last summer to a random Twitter fan is the kind of thing that won’t soon be forgotten.

To hear his associates and family reflect on the situation is to understand how serious he takes it, too. In terms of stressful moments in his career, they say, there’s the 2012 Finals loss to the Miami Heat, the agony of his free agency decision last summer, and this.

“I look at my life as like a big playground streetball game, because I play in the NBA and I try to – when I think about playing in the NBA, that’s how small I try to make it, so I can control it and so I can really feel the joy of playing basketball,” he explained. “It’s just another way of me talking trash. Like I said, I took it too far, and I regret talking about Billy and the Thunder. It’s just stupid of me. I feel so bad about this (expletive), because I don’t never want to affect anybody else with what I say.”